Have You Loved Well?
“As a leader, the measure of success is found in the question have you loved well?” These words echoed within me as I left a three-day intensive leadership conference this past weekend in Seattle. It is rare that a conference of any kind is able, in the same weekend, to reveal to me my utter failings and shortcomings and yet, at the same time, celebrate the beauty that I reveal to the world. This beauty is not exclusive or self-generated. This beauty has nothing to do with hair color, waist size or intelligence. This beauty is a gift. A gift given to you, to me, and to everyone made in the image of God.
But, as I discovered this weekend, there is a problem.
I am afraid.
I am afraid to love myself. I am afraid to love others. I am afraid to admit that I am truly beautiful. I am afraid of the implications of that kind of love. Love begs me to consider the question who would I actually be if I gave myself over to love and to be loved? Love asks why I hold so tightly onto my failings to recall them at a moments notice but fight with every once of energy in me to deny the beauty that lies within.
On some level perhaps, I fear love blinding to me to my own sin and brokenness. The voice in my head says something like if you love THAT much you will just ignore sin, injustices, and brokenness that is all around you. Good point, I think. After all, love is accepting. I think, If the church has that much love it will probably be filled with a bunch of murderers and prostitutes.
And then it hits me.
Why isn’t the church filled with more murderers and prostitutes? Why is my church so safe? To what extent am I loving well?
Love scares me because it is unpredictable, risky, and just outright irrational. Love risks creating, giving, and receiving. Love compels one to give his Son to be murdered for the sake of new relationship. Love causes one to give up all to gain all. Love is not safe.
Toward the end of the Apostle Peter’s life he wrote a verse saying, Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. He does not say that love ignores a multitude of sins and in the process fails to recognize that we are destroying relationships. That is not love. Love sees sin. Love sacrifices to forgive and overcome sin. And love reaches out to see beauty in the face of sin.
Love covering sins says that I see your brokenness and sin but I choose to forgive because you are more valuable than your mistakes. Covering sins says I value the risk of relationship over the safety of solitude. Covering sins says that I will allow myself to let go of the failings and shortcomings and to see the beauty.
When we choose to celebrate the beauty that is in each other in the face of our brokenness, this, I believe, is being people that love well.
Posted on April 14, 2008 12:00 AM
